A community health worker checking a patient at a rural clinic

Relief · Ministry area

Health & Wellbeing

Care that arrives before a crisis does

Relief · Today

Why this matters

Community-level health care, prevention and wellbeing support, close to where people actually live.

The distance between a household and competent medical care decides an enormous number of outcomes. A few hours can be the whole difference for a mother in labour or a child with malaria.

Our health work concentrates on shortening that distance: training community health volunteers, strengthening the small clinics that already exist, and dealing with the water and sanitation conditions that generate illness in the first place.

We also take seriously the things health programmes often skip — grief, trauma, and mental health — because a person is more than a set of symptoms.

What we do

The work in detail

Specific activities, delivered by partner churches and community leaders.

Community health volunteers

Training and equipping local volunteers to recognise danger signs, deliver basic care, refer urgently when needed and follow up afterwards.

Maternal and newborn care

Antenatal support, safe delivery planning, transport arrangements for labour and postnatal visits for mother and baby.

Child health and nutrition

Growth monitoring, treatment of malnutrition, immunisation support and guidance for caregivers on feeding young children well on a small budget.

Water, sanitation and hygiene

Safe water, household and school latrines, handwashing provision and hygiene education — the cheapest health intervention there is.

Strengthening local clinics

Equipment, supplies, solar power and staff training for existing health facilities, rather than creating new structures that depend on us.

Mental health and pastoral care

Training for pastors and volunteers in listening, trauma awareness and appropriate referral, plus support groups for those carrying loss.

How we work

Principles specific to this ministry

We strengthen the public and mission health services already present, not compete with them.
Prevention gets as much attention and funding as treatment.
Health volunteers are selected by their own communities.
Care is offered to everyone, regardless of faith.

What we look for

The change we are actually after

More mothers deliver with a skilled attendant present.
Households recognise danger signs early and seek care sooner.
Preventable water-borne illness declines where sanitation improves.
People carrying grief and trauma find somewhere to take it.

These are described qualitatively on purpose. No statistics have been invented for this website — verified figures will be published in our annual reporting.